Insider (February 2018) (Patreon)

Hello! I’m Mark, and this is what I’ve been doing in February. 

Rise of the Systemic Game 

I had been thinking about this video for quite some time. I’ve spoken about systemic design before, in the immersive sim and the AI episodes, but wanted to provide something a bit more substantial that would define the term and explore all the major elements of this kind of game. 

The core of the video was always going to be about why systemic games are cool, things that make games more systemic, and problems that systemic games fall into. But the other parts of the video changed a bunch. 

At one point, it was going to be much more about how the immersive sim was dead - but that’s okay because lots of games have systemic design now. But it felt like I was burying good, general purpose info in a video about shifts in the industry. So I shunted that stuff to the end. 

(Above: some stuff that got scrapped from the final episode)

It was also going to go into more depth about the inputs / outputs stuff. But I came to realise that it was getting too technical for a general purpose audience - but also way too straightforward for a developer audience. So I scaled it down to the stuff about the Far Cry tiger. 

I was also going to make the Zelda stuff even more prominent, but I’ve done a lot of Breath of the Wild coverage now!

Overall I’m pleased with the video and it got a great reception. It’s received almost 250,000 views, and I got lovely comments and tweets from people at Arkane, Ubisoft, and other places.

(Dan is Senior Tech Animator at Motive Studios)

The thing that weirds me out is that the video is so short. I feel like it’s packed with detail and covers a lot of ground, and was fully expecting it to be one of my longest videos. But it came out at just under 13 minutes. Oh well, I don’t think I’ll ever be a long form video creator. 

Assist Mode 

Another video topic that has been on my mind. I had essentially felt unsatisfied with where I left that Dark Souls difficulty video, because I never fully resolved the conflict in my brain.

That being: a belief that game designers carefully craft experiences that we should embrace - but also, that all players are different and should be able to change the game however they want. 

I had been thinking about the power of communication for a while, but Celeste’s assist mode gave me the push to turn it into a proper video. Plus, I had been reading about SOMA’s safe mode. And then someone on my Discord suggested Heat Signature’s permadeath stuff and I think that really tied the video together. So, thanks!

This was another well received video. Not just the views, but the huge ratio of likes and comments. This one really resonated with a bunch of people, who wanted to show their appreciation or give their own opinion on the topic. 

Most comments were positive. Some were not. Among those, there were some totally reasonable rebuttals. But also plenty of people just have really toxic viewpoints when it comes to accessibility and who gets to finish games.

The comment that really baffles me is one that's like "I don't feel any satisfaction from finishing a game if I know others did so on easy mode". Like, wow. That's a revealing comment.

This stuff really bums me out. One of my least favourite things about games is that there is a skill disparity, and a competitive element. That's wonderful for multiplayer games! But when it affects two people having fun in their own way, it gets nasty.

Anyway. I’ll keep fighting for this stuff. Everyone should get to enjoy this hobby, if you ask me. 

Other stuff

So, February’s been a really whirlwind crazy month for me in real life. I won’t go into it right now, just because it’s early days, but that’s all been very distracting. In a good way!

That means I haven’t played much stuff outside of games for videos. Plus, it doesn’t help that I’m still slogging my way through Yakuza 5 which is more than double the length of any previous Yakuza game. 

I’m pretty disappointed with this one. So games 1-3 were all focused on one character, Kazuma Kiryu. But Yakuza 4 split the game into four chapters with you playing as Kazuma and three other protagonists. And it kinda worked because the stories were very interlinked and it all took place in the same city.

Yakuza 5 has five protagonists (!), I don’t even know how many cities, and a bunch of different stories that are only vaguely linked. That leads to things like... 40 hours into the game, when it feels like things should be wrapping up, you start a whole new story with a whole new character in a whole new city. Yeesh. 

I’ve found it hard to get invested in anything - a city, a character, a story, a move set, a bunch of side quests - because everything keeps changing. The game’s also really bloated with strange side missions and new gameplay like taxi driving and dancing. 

From what I’ve seen, Yakuza 6 just goes back to Kazuma kicking arse in Tokyo. So, that sounds promising. 

Okay, outside of playing games. GMTK got a shoutout in an advert for Toki Tori 2’s Switch port. That’s cool. A lot of people got turned on to that wonderful game through my video so it’s nice to see the devs acknowledging my work. 

Also, even though that quote is very old I largely stand by it. TT2 is good as hell.

I’ve had this quote stuff happen a bunch of times though the old reviews I used to do, but I think this is the first time for a GMTK episode!

Oh, and I also won an award! Critical Distance named me the video essayist of the year, which is very awesome. Their write up is lovely (and surprisingly accurate!) and I received so many congratulations. I’m very honoured.

So, in general, 2018 is just going incredibly well. And, now I’ve said that, everything is gonna start to go wrong isn’t it? I wonder if life is more like Call of Duty or Mario Kart...

Upcoming videos

My plan this year is to start each month with a big, educational topic video (feedback loops, systemic design), and then follow up with something on a single game (Rayman Legends) or a conversation starter (assist modes). 

So the topic vid for March will be puzzle design! Looking at games like Portal, Talos Principle, Inside, Stephen’s Sausage Roll, etc to see how their puzzles are made. 

Now this is actually really tough. This is not something that just makes intuitive sense to me. And it’s hard to reverse engineer / analyse these puzzles. I mean, I’ve got some ideas. But it’s not the same as looking at a Mario level or a Bioshock stage. 

So I’ve been doing some other stuff like making my own puzzles in Deus Ex GO to get into the mindset. And talking to some devs behind rad puzzle games, about their process. Turns out, it’s all quite vague and experimental on their end, too. 

If you’re a dev reading this and you’ve made puzzles - shoot me a message. Would love to hear about your experiences. 

Anyway. I’ve got lots of notes, footage, and ideas. But right now I’m just kinda throwing ideas around, reading about other types of puzzle, and generally thinking on stuff like a huge nerd. 

My job is weird and dumb and you make it possible. Thank you.